Living life right for a change

In a world of speed and convenience, cabbage rolls do not fit the model but it is one of our family favorites. When you have the time(and it can take 3 hrs to prepare from start to finish), it is a wonderful meal to share with your family. Feel free to adapt this recipe with any changes to suit your own family’s pallet.

Ingredients:

1 head of cabbage(pick your color, any color)

1 lb ground meat (beef/pork/chicken/turkey/tauntaun)

Yes, purple cabbage is a little disturbing but yummy!

1/2 c long grain slow cook rice

2 medium eggs

1 onion(chopped)

1 15oz cans tomato sauce

1 15 oz can whole tomatoes

1 15 oz can diced tomatoes

1/4 c brown sugar

1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Salt/Pepper to taste

Directions:

Combine the meat, rice, eggs, and onion in a bowl, adding salt and pepper if you wish, and set aside.

In a pot or saucepan simmer the tomatoes, tomato sauce, brown sugar, and Worcestershire sauce long enough for the brown sugar to dissolve and stir to an even color. Then set aside.

Now, take the head of cabbage and discard the first few leaves. They tend to be tougher, even after cooking. The tender under leaves are better anyway. Remove the leaves with a minimum of ripping from the head.

Blanche the full leaves in a simmering water bath to soften. No more than 3 minutes per leaf.

Optional: Before or after blanching take a knife and cut the thickest vein off the back of the leaf. Doing so will allow the leaf to wrap more readily around the meat and rice mixture.

Wrap 1/4 cup of the meat mixture in the cabbage leaves. Makes about 10-12 rolls.

Cut the remaining cabbage and place in the bottom of a 9×13 casserole pan.

Place the cabbage rolls on the loose cabbage and pour the tomato sauce over the cabbage rolls.

Welcome to Sherburne County Backroads. The name has not changed. In fact, Sherburne County Backroads has been in existence for nearly 10 years with many iterations in between. In the last two years it had been very much neglected but never forgotten. Well.. by me anyway.

While the Facebook Page and Twitter account have maintained a steady flow of information over that time, the website had become irrelevant and dated. In a world of even faster moving media, it became apparent that a serious retool was needed to make it a place worthy of your time. Here are some of the changes:

We have added another writer(and hopefully many more in the near future) to diversify the perspective given from our articles.

We have made the site more visual and interactive. It is clean but more visually appealing now.

We are focusing our content around areas of our particular interests, food and country living. At least until we get this thing rolling

We hope that Sherburne County Backroads can provide you with a wealth of information, humor, and insight that you can use in your daily life. Thank you for stopping by.

Norman Rockwell brought the all American image of holiday Utopia to life for generations to come. But long before it was reduced to a bowl shaped red gelatinous marvel in an infamous print, the glowing red gem known as a cranberry was so much more.

The natives of what would become the New England States used these beauties as more than just a food but as dyes and medicine as well. Early settlers counted on them to treat scurvy and other illnesses. Would be presidents even traded them to one another in return for books and information. Somewhere through the lines of history this fabulous, once treasured fruit has been displaced and almost forgotten. It has been demoted to nothing more than a can shaped ambiguous goo to be pushed around on your plate until, when the perfect moment arises, to be hidden under the table and fed to the anxiously waiting family dog.

Some of us do nothing more with the glittering red fruit than pouring a splash of its juice over ice, or suffer an even worse fate, being over looked all together. OH HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN! Many folks are perfectly content to let it be at that and nothing more.

However if you are looking for ways to restore these beauties to their former glory, there are a number of ways you can do so. If you are up for a road trip, head on over to a little town in Wisconsin. Every year Stone Lake, WI holds their very own Cranberry Festival, complete with a royal coronation and dinner, wine tasting, crafting fair and even a marsh tour.

For those who might want to stay closer to home, there are a number of ways to add cranberries to your holiday table. Stuffing, breads, and muffins provide you an opening to reintroduce the noble cranberry back into your diet.

Looking for an old world flare? You can simply simmer a quart of the fruit with a cup of water until it resembles marmalade. Remove from the stovetop and stir in a pound of brown sugar and strain and serve. Another option is use molasses in place of the brown sugar. For a more modern flavor add the rind of orange or lemon or even add a cup of red wine while simmering.

Here are just a few ideas to help you bring back this old time favorite to your family.

May there always be a place at your table and in your heart for those you hold dear. Happy eating, folks.